Why LinkedIn Is Not A Dating Site

LinkedIn used to be the favorite networking site among my friends. We enjoyed linking in with colleagues, seeing their updates and reading the latest blogs. But recently more unusual LinkedIn messages began to arrive:

“Hi! I work for a mining company in South Africa…..”

“I’m sorry but your pic was so captivating I had to go against the terms and conditions of this very great site to contact you….”

“I usually don’t react this way to a profile, but yours seemed really special and I would love to be friends and see where that takes us…”

What was going on? We were not young, single professionals, but we nonetheless seemed to have fallen into an alternate universe in which LinkedIn was OkCupid.com. In the unlikely event that the messages were sincere rather than romance scams, polite replies were sent. We used LinkedIn only for professional reasons, we explained; the other parties disappeared. Then more invitations arrived, this time from corporate recruiters sending multiple messages a day and anxious to move to private text.

It turns out that this depressing turn of events was not just happenstance. Would-be suitors (and scammers) may not have decided to invade LinkedIn on their own. They were invited there – not by LinkedIn, but by business publications, freelance journalists and entrepreneurs like Max Fischer, who launched an app called BeLinked, which targets singles on LinkedIn and suggests “matches” to users based on their imported data. (Fischer told the Chicago Tribune he developed it in part “after angling to score dates himself.”) A few years ago, a jaunty article on Inc.com christened LinkedIn “the new online dating site,” a story followed by dog whistles from hook-up sites around the country. This year, an amusing article in Wired suggested that LinkedIn executives – who discourage using the platform for dating – secretly know that that is its ultimate use.

But in case this sounds promising to anyone out there, here are four reasons not to use LinkedIn as a dating site:

It’s harassing. Tinder, Match.com, OkCupid and others are dating sites; LinkedIn is for professional networking.In a LinkedIn post, Salesloft marketing director of programs Eric Martin has called on men to stop hitting on women on LinkedIn. “Let’s get one thing straight, guys: It does not matter what words you use, if you’re reaching out to a woman on LinkedIn, there should be absolutely no non-professional content in that message….…Many men seem to think that if you’re not being overtly sexual, everything’s cool. It’s not.” Martin, whose wife and female coworkers were subjected to multiple unwanted solicitations on LinkedIn, adds that singling out women’s physical features for praise on LinkedIn was “suggestive [and] sexual, in an understated, mostly creepy way.”

It’s demeaning. The New York Post did a trend piece called “Forget Tinder, Professionals Are Using LinkedIn to Hook Up,” which included stories about singles who met on LinkedIn and married soon afterward. To be fair, the New York Post was simply talking about people who met for business reasons and felt an enduring spark, much in the same way a reporter might write about people falling in love at a business conference. But the underbelly of LinkedIn solicitations was becoming a larger trend. First-person pieces by professional women on LinkedIn described their frustration at getting harassed on a platform devoted to professional networking. In the United Kingdom, human rights lawyer Charlotte Proudham, then 27, received a LinkedIn message from a 57-year-old married attorney praising her LinkedIn picture as “stunning!!!” and that “you definitely win the prize for the best LinkedIn picture that I have ever seen.” In an exchange she posted online, she replied that women didn’t want to be “objectified” for their looks and have their accomplishments ignored.

It may damage your business. Small Business Trends has warned that using LinkedIn as a dating site may put your business at risk. In fact, you may be courting a liability suit. In a lawsuit filed this June and reported by the Insurance Journal, a mid-level financial services professional identified only as Jane Doe is suing a unit of SunTrust Banks after a recruiter who had been trying to interest her in a position then began to send her inappropriate sexual messages on LinkedIn, including a photo of his genitals. In a lawsuit sure to send a chill through employers everywhere, the law firm of celebrity attorney Mark Geragos argues that the employer is responsible for employee behavior on the professional networking platform. The lawsuit “seeks unspecified damages for sexual harassment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and negligent retention and supervision,” according to the journal.

It’s risky. Lest its official position be unclear, Inc. magazine recently replaced its freelance contributor’s pro-LinkedIn dating piece with a strongly worded Inc. brand editorial called “4 Reasons LinkedIn Is Not An Online Dating Site.” Among the reasons: the risk of being publicly shamed, like the 57-year-old U.K. attorney was after commenting on Proudham’s “stunning” photo (her exasperated post about it received more than 27,000 likes). Even male or female professionals who kindly accept an invitation to coffee “for an informational interview about your field” may be at putting themselves at risk. To take one example, a female freelance writer who used LinkedIn to score several dates under the pretense of doing informational interviews wrote up her “investigation” in the online publication The Bold Italic. Although she wrote glowingly of her unnamed platonic “dates” with LinkedIn scientists and entrepreneurs – nearly all with partnered men who were kind and strictly professional with their career advice – she hinted at a tryst with a reporter who then “ghosted” her (“give me back my earrings, [expletive]!”). She didn’t name the reporter, but in a spiteful turn, sprinkled in enough details for his friends and colleagues to identify him. That’s not the kind of professional attention anyone ever wants to attract.

Diana Hembree has covered business, health and science issues for Time Inc., MoneyGeek.com and other media and is working on an M.S. in Sustainable Food Systems from Green Mountain College.